Thursday, February 28, 2013

Finishing early

So the (Roman Catholic) pope has now resigned, which got me to wondering: Can a Mormon prophet resign? I mean, we already have a precedent or two that a Mormon prophet doesn’t get removed from office when disabled (even in such a way that he’s mentally disabled to some extent), but could one simply announce that he’s not the prophet anymore? (Of course, part of the answer might simply be to ask what would stop him from doing so, if that’s what he wanted to do.) Also, if it happened, what would the ripple effects be?

1 comment:

I'm really not sure they can. I've never really thought about it before, but I'm thinking it's a calling for life. Period. (This wasn't the first Pope to resign, so they did have precedent... they've had a heck of a lot more Popes than we've have Prophets.) I guess in our church I figure once they are in the quorum of the twelve there's an unspoken understanding there that they may one day be the prophet and by accepting their call to the quorum they are accepting that possibility. The Pope, being an elected position, while he usually comes from certain Cardinals, there is no line of succession so just being a Cardinal doesn't mean you'll ever even be in the running for Pope.